Here in Veryfridayland it's Friday every day of the week, and what more excuse do you need to procrastinate on the internet? And it's made easy for you - all that arduous surfing has already been done by an experienced operative with appropriate lumbar and carpal tunnel support arrangements. Dig in!

28 December 2006

'To a casual observer it could be the psychedelic creation of a mischievous puppy that has dipped its paws in paint. But it may be one of the most extraordinary pictures ever snapped.

It is, scientists said yesterday, the glow from the first things to form in the universe, more than 13 billion years ago. Snapped by NASA's Spitzer space telescope, the bizarre objects must have existed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago'

'Welcome to New Zealand: Where you can smoke in the Beehive, tall dogs are routinely shortened and it's considered bad manners to close a farm gate. Visitors to Wellington are asked to lift feet while on the cable car - to help it make it up the slope. The utterly unhelpful pearls of wisdom feature in a compendium of "evil advice" dreamt up for tourists by participants in a silly-season competition'

22 December 2006

'Oh, I loved him, but he was... scary. I was going to invite him up to Maine; I have this beautiful home in Maine... but then I reconsidered because I saw that movie again. Do you want someone eating your brain while you are sitting in your beautiful dining room in Maine? I would have probably had a very nice relationship with Anthony Hopkins, but I couldn't get past the Lecter thing'

21 December 2006

'According to the latest US Department of Defense contracts bulletin, John Deere Construction has won a $46.7 million firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity contract for 300 Tractor, Rubber Tired, Articulated, Steering, Multi-Purpose (TRAM). So a tram, another name for a streetcar, it seems is actually an acronym. Does this mean that the following applies...

17 December 2006

Christmas shopping without the long queues, masses of people, traffic jams, and parking hassles – impossible? Not for the hundreds of New Zealanders who are choosing this year to do their shopping online. Timaru woman Kimberley Fisher decided to surf the net recently after having no success in several stores to find a specific DVD. "I couldn't find it in the shops so I tried online. It was simple, just a click of the mouse and cheap postage as well, it got here in about 10 days."

Although the 20-year-old said she still preferred reality shopping, when looking for something in particular the internet was perfect.

Time magazine names a 'person of the year' and plonks them on the cover, as you probably know. Normally it's someone grand and impressive. But this year, deadlines obviously played a part: Time's person of the year for 2006 is... wait for it... "You". Take a bow!

'[Australian Prime Minister] Howard said migrants [to Australia] needed to learn about mateship, but he could not outline how the concept would be tested.

"Mateship is a great Australian concept, it's a concept of everybody pulling together in common adversity," he said. "It's a concept of treating people according to how you find them and not according to the colour of their skin. It's very much part of our ethos. You say 'How do you test it?'. Well, I'm not going to start canvassing what the test is."

'As much as we think we know who Courtney Love is, nothing prepares you for the sprawling intelligence or the keen beauty of her. Love is not like most female celebrities. She is bigger than that. Her hands are meaty and her eyes enormous, her bosom has been surgically enhanced and her lips swollen with collagen. She looks as if someone has coloured her in and strayed beyond the lines'

'It's good to know that the British Transport Police are protecting London's underground commuters from would-be criminals. Last week, they cautioned a man carrying a hockey stick, unimpressed with his rather feeble excuse that he was on his way to play a match. Now a poor accountant (if that's not an oxymoron) Chris Hurd was accosted by a policewoman at Baker Street, near Lord's, and told that the cricket ball he was holding was a "potentially lethal weapon".

"She was completely humourless and inflexible, and showed no understanding of my excitement about the Ashes," he fumed. "She confiscated the ball for most of our conversation, gave me a verbal warning and said she was being very lenient." But a spokesman for the police raised a hitherto unforeseen danger: "What if the ball was dropped and hit an old lady further down the escalator?" Old ladies beware'

Subtitled 'America in Colour: 1939-43', this feature displays a selection of colour photography of American life during the Depression. The vivid images dispel some of the gloom imparted by the traditional black-and-white photography most of us associate with period photography. Interesting stuff.

In a startling insight into the political dynamics that really matter in the cut-and-thrust world of contemporary Australian politics, a Fairfax paper reveals that new Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd 'has been judged less "beautiful" than 85 per cent of candidates at the 2004 federal election'. But there's hope for Kevin yet: 'Prime Minister John Howard fares even worse. A panel of four, which appraised candidate photos from how-to-vote cards, judged Mr Howard to be less beautiful than 95 per cent of candidates'.

A Palmerston North youth charged with possession of $125,000 worth of pure methamphetamine has a father with a long history of drug dealing, but apparently dad 'always discouraged him from getting involved with drugs'. Apart from allegedly selling the kid a pound of cannabis and a set of electronic scales to prepare them for sale, that is. There's a spurned girlfriend subplot too - the accused split up with his girlfriend and started seeing her best friend. The ex turned up to collect her stuff, but came across the meth instead. A regular soap opera! Or perhaps Outrageous Fortune is more accurate.

The B3ta newsletter linked to this ad-game - shoot the daredevil chap from the cannon and land him on the trampoline to progress through the levels. It gets more tricky and entertaining once the 'bouncer' pads come in and you can carome the poor sod all over the place.

For years Private Eye has been running a series of joyful sporting media gaffe quotes called 'Colemanballs', such as the one in the title (the large-looming Paul 'Gazza' Gascoine), and ones like these:

"He [Diawara] brings out an extra six to twelve inches and it's a fantastic tackle. "SCOTT MINTO, BBC

"If history is going to repeat itself I should think we can expect the same thing again."TERRY VENABLES

"Merseyside derbies usually last 90 minutes and I'm sure today's won't be any different." TREVOR BROOKING

"In terms of the Richter Scale this defeat was a force eight gale."JOHN LYALL

For all these and more, see this brilliant yet thoroughly unofficial site...

Noisy shooty fun here - make your little kid ricochet the shots of his BB gun around the forest, and earn points for the number of bounces. Makes cool peeoww! noises. Try not to shoot yourself too often - although that's fun too.

'On the afternoon before the beginning of the 1983 G7 summit James Baker, then White House chief of staff, dropped in to see his boss, Ronald Reagan. Mr Baker was worried about Reagan's lack of preparation for the meeting, where "Reaganomics" was sure to be a source of contention, and left behind a carefully prepared briefing book. But when he returned next morning he was furious to find that the book was unopened - and set about remonstrating with his lazy pupil.

"Well, Jim," Reagan replied calmly, "'The Sound of Music' was on last night'".

'Two Spartans survived [the Battle of Thermopylae]. One, who missed the encounter at Thermopylae because he was on a diplomatic mission, hanged himself in disgrace upon his return home. The other, who missed the battle because of an eye infection (not much of an excuse for a solider, never mind a Spartan), went on a suicide mission in the next major encounter with the Persians. When Spartans said that the only way to return from a battle was with your shield or on it, they meant it'

03 December 2006

A Patea section bought for $1 in 1998 has sold for $65,000. And someone else might be anticipating a similar rate of return: 'At the time of the $1 sale, another section was reportedly swapped for a six-pack of beer. '

Clive James knows perfectly well that a man with a talent to amuse will always have some difficulty persuading the public that he can, so to speak, quote Wittgenstein. And, once they know that he is also from “the bush”, they will expect some coarse material, too. Thus it’s brave of him to stand by the original version of his much-misquoted image of Arnold Schwarzenegger (it was “a brown condom stuffed with walnuts”) against subsequent plagiarism and dilution. He coins a new term for authorial humiliation, when he speaks of a publisher’s “advance” that is really a retreat.

- Christopher Hitchens reviews North Face of Soho (Unreliable Memoirs, Vol. 4) by Clive James, Times, 15 November 2006[If you're interested, the Guardian has an entertaining spoof digested read of NFoS, which includes this passage on his filmstar interviewing: 'It wasn't an unmitigated success, as I invariably had a better understanding of the actors' work than they did, but it was none the less instructive']

'The former ad exec Peter Mayle's 1989 best-seller A Year In Provence shot him to prominence, and now his 2004 novel, on very similar lines, has been turned into a humourless slice of tourist gastro-porn. A Good Year stars, incredibly, Russell Crowe as the conceited Brit who inherits a sumptuous house and vineyard in the south of France from his rascally uncle (Albert Finney); he comes over intending to flog it for a barrowload of euros, but finds himself falling in love with the locals and their adorable life. It is the biggest case of miscasting in history. Anyone, *anyone*, would have been better in this part. Steven Seagal would've been better. Janette Krankie would've been better. Ridley Scott directs, and makes a chain-mailed gladiatorial fist of the comedy involved'

'Sir - You said that the Boeing 747 was also delayed, for two years in 1969 ("The airliner that fell to earth", October 7th). The letter of intent, signed in December 1965, proposed the first delivery in November 1969. Actual first delivery, signed by me for Pan Am, was December 12th 1969. That is a date I cannot forget. It was my wife's birthday and I was late for dinner'

- Letter to the editor from Robert Wallace Blake, Economist, 4 November 2006

01 December 2006

A Christchurch Catholic school principal was accused of "working for Satan" after allowing pupils to work with Muslim girls on a school project. St Thomas of Canterbury College principal Bruce Stevenson was abused over the phone by a woman objecting to a Young Enterprise Scheme project involving a group of Year 11 boys and Muslim girls from the United Muslimahs of Canterbury. Stevenson said the woman accused him of working for Satan and that he would go to hell for his actions.

'One man abandoned his drunken girlfriend asleep and told the cabbie that he was leaving her as a tip. Another driver was lumbered with a man wearing only underpants. Other taxi drivers in the capital have reported finding a machinegun, an antique telescope and a bag of diamonds worth £100,000 on the rear seats of their cabs'

Dilbert's Scott Adams has been thinking about the art of pilfering funny stories from the news for the purpose of blogging:

The key to finding good humor fodder is that the story must be NEARLY funny without being completely funny on its own. For example, if I see a story about some spatially challenged burglar who got his head stuck in a chimney, and a stork built a nest in his ass, that’s already completely funny. There’s nothing for me to add.

What I’m looking for is a story that makes me giggle before I even know why – the potential is there but it needs some magic humor dust to make it all that it can be. I mention this because I was reading on MSNBC.com that the Pope is visiting Turkey. This is 50% funny all by itself.

Then I read that 20,000 Muslim protesters in Istanbul were chanting “Pope don’t come!” (Seriously.)